Power in the whole of Iloilo City went out very early Thursday morning because of the really big momma of a storm they – very, very aptly – called Bagyo Nanang.

According to the news, it struck at Signal 1 and 2 over most areas of the country. Though this alone may not sound that destructive, the heavy rains that came along were the ones that caused numerous flash floods, resulting in people being evacuated from their homes because the water got very high.

Many electric posts were struck down by the combined force of the rain and the winds, so Iloilo City suffered a major blackout during the daylight hours of Thursday, 8 November 2001.

However, our residence area just had the brilliant luck of having a power cable snapping off the electric post during the most inopportune times, so we were subjected to said blackout until Friday afternoon. We had to wait for Panay Electric Company’s (PECO) troubleshooter team to fix the broken line. Man, I had a jolly good time trying to get through PECO’s line to file the broken power line report.

The power is back now and pretty much functioning the way it is supposed to, but I am still pretty worried about people all over the country – particularly in our city – whose houses, appliances and furniture were rendered useless by the flash floods. To think of my family in that situation…*shudder*